This study examined the factors that impact on positive pupil performance in the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) in the Botha-Bothe district primary schools of Lesotho. Given the pupil performance in Lesotho districts the study aimed to find out what factors lead to high pupil performance in Botha-Bothe district, as well as why some schools in the same district perform better than others, and how low performing schools and school developers can learn from the high performing schools. This study used a descriptive survey research design to collect quantitative and qualitative data from the Ministry of Education District officials, primary school principals and primary school teachers. A descriptive survey design used involved questionnaires interviews, and document analysis to collect data for the study. The research findings in this study revealed that the Ministry of Education Officials, principals and teachers specifically identified the following factors to have positive impact on pupil performance: • A teacher with positive relationships • Effective teaching and learning processes • Purposeful leadership by the principal • The way in which the teacher and pupils interact with each other. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

The main aim of this study was to gain an overall estimate of the incidence of self-reported burnout among Indian secondary school teachers. Other secondary, though closely related aims were: a) to determine whether teachers differ, with respect to selected background variables, in their perceptions of burnout; b) to investigate the differences, if any, in the responses of burnoutees and non-burnoutees to 25 selected role-related variables with a view to examining the relationship between such variables and burnout; and c) to examine the distribution of burnoutees and nonburnoutees on an internal - external locus of control dichotomy with a view to examining the relationship between this personality construct and burnout. The sample of Level One secondary school teachers in this study (N = 690) was randomly selected from a list of all Indian secondary schools in the greater Durban area (N = 59). Teachers responded to a four-part questionnaire designed to gather data relating to demographic characteristics, role-related stressors, locus of control and degree of burnout. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to determine whether a respondent was a "burnoutee" or a "non-burnoutee". It included 3 subscales relating to Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalisation and Personal Accomplishment. The major findings of this study were as follows: a) Approximately 1 in 4 teachers in the sample saw himself/herself as a "burnoutee". b) When teachers were grouped according to background variables, the incidence of burnout was found to be greater among female, married, younger, less experienced, graduate and low-salaried teachers. c) The majority of both "burnoutees" and "non-burnoutees" in this study were unhappy with teaching and found it to be only "moderately satisfying". Many also declared that teaching had not lived up to their expectations and that they would readily change to an entirely new kind of occupation if they had to start their careers afresh. The low degree of satisfaction was found to correlate with perceived feelings of burnout. Older teachers, however, enjoyed greater job satisfaction than their younger counterparts. d) No relationship was found between the personality construct of Locus of Control and burnout. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1992.

This study investigates the work that is currently being done to promote contact between home and school at a residential school situated in a rural area of KwaZulu- Natal. The school serves primary school children with physical disabilities between the ages of five and seventeen years. The subjects in this study were twenty five parents, teachers, learners, and support staff. The research methodology was in the form of a qualitative case study. Individual interviews, focus group interviews, observation as well as document analysis were used to investigate the nature and extent of parental involvement, the areas in which parents participated, and how the school supported parents and the learners. The results revealed that the school acknowledges the value of parents a partners, and has initiated a parent involvement programme. Parents are involved in structures created by the school, namely, a parent teacher association, parent groups in the communities, learner adoption scheme. However, findings revealed that in a number of important areas parents are not equal partners. These are school governance, curriculum decisions regarding their children, choice of school placement, and admission and discharge of their children. An important finding was that in residential schools, because parents are not part of the immediate school community the concept of "parents as partners" is difficult to achieve. Most rural parents live great distances away from the school. Time, distance, work commitments, family commitments, and financial constraints make participation almost impossible. An implication of this study is that if residential schools continue to exist there is a need for the school to take cognisance of the various contextual factors that influence parental involvement in such a setting. Schools should find creative ways to overcome barriers that may exist. Schools need to be aware of recent policy developments regarding the rights of parents, for example, the South African Schools Act. Issues such as parent participation in school governance, their right to choice, and their rights regarding educational decisions on their children, enshrined in policy documents need to be, addressed collaboratively with parents. Another important implication is that policy makers need to review the role of large residential schools in meeting the educational needs of children with disabilities, in particular the long term goal of children gaining full citizenship in their communities. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, 1996.

This dissertation contains three schools used as the sample when conducting the study on curriculum reform implementation. This change in curriculum follows the change in the South African politics in 1994. The year 2006 was the year for implementing the curriculum change in the Further Education and Training band (FET). Learners in grade 10 were the first ones to be taught following the OBE principles in secondary schools with FET. The purpose of this study was to explore how schools are managing the transition and implementation of the National Curriculum Statement. The research design followed the qualitative approach. All three schools are in the deep rural area of Msinga in the Umzinyathi District. The research was informed by two types of leadership theories which are: the Bureaucratic and Collegial theories; these theories helped to find how the principals are using their roles and understanding of the change process to bring about curriculum delivery in their schools. This study built upon the findings of the previous studies conducted by De Jager, Davey and Clark. Their findings revealed complexities and inequalities in the preparation for the curriculum change due to various factors including: lack of proper training and planning for change. My study sought to find how the principals and their school management teams including educators are recontextualising change to make it suitable to their schools' needs. The understanding of their roles in leading and managing change was the yardstick of how change was implemented. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

The implementation of Outcomes Based education in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and American states had problems (Steyn & Wilkinson, 1998). South Africa was no exception during the implementation of OBE in the foundation phase. Since 1997 the National Department of Education has spent millions of rands on providing training and materials to facilitate the implementation of Curriculum 2005 (C200S) / OBE in the compulsory school phase. Educators who were to implement C2005 the following year had to attend development workshops the previous year. Nevertheless educators have had problems in implementing C 2005. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the training of trainers is effective in training other educators to implement OBE. A review of the related literature revealed that much research has been done on the implementation of OBE / C2005. General recommendations for the training of educators and for implementation were given. The literature consulted did not, however, address the criteria used for the selection of trainers, how the training programme was implemented and delivered and, neither was the effectiveness of trainers addressed. The study employed a qualitative approach and data were collected by the use of questionnaires and interviews. Interviews were utilised because they involve direct personal contact with the respondents. A non-scheduled structured interview was conducted since issues to be investigated were determined prior to the interviews. The sites were three schools from different ex Departments of Education in the Umvoti District in the region of Pietermaritzburg in Mshwathi and Wartburg circuits. The subjects of the study were the educators of grades one to three, foundation phase and the educators of grade seven. All these educators had attended the training workshops. The sample included Subject Advisers, who were involved in the training of the educators and the Superintendents of Education Management (SEMs). The study revealed that the workshops were not effective as a cascading model towards the implementation of C200S / OBE. Information was diluted along the way and the facilitators were not fully prepared for their roles. The methods used in the training workshops were not relevant to the different contexts of implementation. The study also revealed that educators, the implementers of C2005 / OBE lacked support from the different stakeholders. The recommendation is that authorities take into account different contexts of implementation and different levels of professional development of educators, so that training methods used are relevant to the participants. It is also recommended that support is offered from all stakeholders. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Ed)-Universtiy of Natal, Durban, 1998.

Intermediate Phase learners represent our "window of opportunity" since children in the middle childhood years are in the process of acquiring knowledge and forming attitudes and beliefs which will have long-term implications in the fight against HIV/AIDS. This is an in depth study to examine how HIV/AIDS education is fostered in the Intermediate Phase in a school. The focus is to examine the level of knowledge and understanding of HIV/AIDS of the learners and Life-skills educators and how it is managed in the school. The study used a mixed methodology design employing both quantitative (learners' questionnaires) and qualitative (educators' and manager's interviews) methods of data collection. The questionnaire embodied both open-ended and closed questions which were further categorized into dominant themes: level of knowledge and understanding of HIV/AIDS, sources of information, learners' attitudes and myths/misconceptions abut HIV/AIDS. The data produced was triangulated with the responses from the educators' and manager's interviews. Analysis of the data was carried out in the Microsoft Excel program by using the programs graph wizard to generate bar graphs for easier interpretation of the open-ended questions. The findings of the questionnaire showed positive results and left me with a sense of optimism for the future, although there were areas of concern as in the findings of the grade four learners. The educators' responses to the interviews revealed the reasons for the concern which are attributed to lack of training in life-skills and sexuality education, unavailability of resources and poor knowledge about policy documents. The management response also revealed lack of focus and commitment from all stakeholders to give impetus to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The role of the school and religious and civic organisations cannot be underestimated in the fight against AIDS. We should empower our children with education and life skills - not only so that they can prevent themselves from being infected, but also so that they can have the opportunity to learn to become compassionate caring members of a society that will be struggling with the aftermath of HIV/AIDS for a long time to come. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

The main aim of this study was to identify those elements in a child's home background that assist him to become schoolready. The secondary, though closely related aims were to determine whether significant cognitive and linguistic differences existed between schoolready and non-schoolready children. The study, moreover, sought to establish whether the parents of these two groups of children differed in their views about the manner in which children should be reared. The sample of children comprised the following two groups: (a) The Preschoolers, who were due to enter Class i in 1990 had had approximately one year's preschool experience. On the basis of the results of a test of schoolreadiness, these children were divided further into two groups - a "schoolready" group and a "non-schoolready group". Each of these groups comprised thirty children. (b) The Non-Preschoolers, who were also due to enter Class i in 1990, but lacked preschool experience. These children were divided into a "schoolready" and a "non-schoolready" group on the same basis as the Preschoolers. Each group comprised twenty children. Cognitive ability was tested by means of the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices and language ability by means of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The results of this study highlighted the role of the home as perhaps the single most important educational agency in a child's early years. A stimulating home environment plays an important part in helping the child to become schoolready. The following aspects were found to be particularly influential in this process: low educational level of the parents, poor housing, low income and poor reading habits of parents. A second major finding of this study was that children who had had preschool experience were better equipped to meet the demands of the formal school situation. Moreover, cognitive development is highly dependent upon the kind of verbal interactions between parents and child, and this, in turn, has a marked impact on the child's scholastic performance. The study also revealed that the parents of non-schoolready children are, by and large, more authoritarian in their relationship with their children and in their views about how children should be reared. The report ends with an indication of various steps that can be taken to promote schoolreadiness among preschool children. It is suggested that the implementation of these steps would lead to a smaller number of non-ready six-year- olds seeking admission to Class i at the beginning of each year. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1990.

Beginning with Piaget, literature has accumulated indicating that children's moral judgments pass through a series of stages culminating in the application of high order general principles to practical judgments. Principled moral reasoning, therefore, has come to be seen as similar in principle to other abstract sciences where less formal, narrative forms of thinking are seen to be less abstract and more immature. Kohlberg's research as inspired by the work of Piaget who had tried to connect the development of a child's moral judgment to its overall cognitive development. Kohlberg believed that as the whole human personality matures, our thinking about right and wrong starts at a preconventional level, then progresses to a conventional level, then finally arrives at postconventional thinking. Each of these three levels has two specific stages. Kohlberg's research included subjects from many cultures, and therefore, he believed that he was uncovering a universal innate developmental structure of the human personality. Carol Gilligan has posed a serious threat to this general scheme by suggesting that a more narrative contextual approach to moral reasoning, what she calls an "ethic of care", which far from applying abstract moral rules to particular cases, treats each case in terms of a host of considerations any or all of which may have some role in arriving at a judgment or an action. She argues that such moral reasoning is as valid an orientation of moral thinking as that based on the application of general, abstract rules, and furthermore, that the bias towards this orientation is, at base, a gender based. A rich body of data has now been collected congruent with these claims. In order to explore the relationship between this alternate proposal and Gilligan's "justice" and "care" orientations, this study was designed to examine the moral orientation with a group of adolescents, fifteen boys and fifteen girls, at two high schools in Durban. The participants live in a working class, housing estate that has high levels of crime and violence. The adolescences were requested to reflect upon two scenarios depicting real life dilemmas, and then engage in moral judgments and decision-making in response to probing questions put to them in an interview situation. Results have shown that, contrary to Gilligan's view; across age and gender the adolescences responses reflected a higher moral orientation to justice than care. 66% of boys' responses show greater use of a justice orientation in their reasoning than care orientation 34%. A similar pattern was evident with girls across the age ranges: 53% of girls' responses were justice oriented as against to 47 % that were care oriented. An interesting finding was that girls' use of a justice orientation increased with age, and the use of moral reasoning that reflected a care orientation decreased with age. However, in line with Gilligan's theory, boys' responses across age ranges reflected a higher orientation to justice than to care. Based on previous research findings (Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988; Johnston, 1988), it was hypothesized that female learners would demonstrate higher ethic of care scores than men. The results from this study fell in line with this hypothesis. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

Television is an extremely powerful and influential medium and if utilized appropriately it could promote literacy and revive a culture of teaching and learning in South Africa. The significance of educational television can only be realized if all role players are equally committed to this powerful medium: the National Broadcaster, the Department of National Education, school management team, parents, learners and perhaps the most important component, the educators in schools. School TV is an ideal vehicle to sustain and promote new teaching and learning strategies such as Outcomes Based Education. This research study concluded, that Educational Television is instrumental in supporting learners and educators in new teaching and learning strategies such as Outcomes Based Education. The research findings from this study provide valuable information on the preference and usage of SABC School TV in foundation phase classrooms. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2000.